Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 49 - Ironclad Proof Released — The Jujutsu World Trembles!

"Don't rush."

Toji clamped a hand on his shoulder.

Satoru Gojo looked back.

The Six Eyes locked onto Toji. "You're stopping me?"

Toji Fushiguro didn't let go.

He'd dropped his usual hot-blooded act entirely.

"Snapping those old bones' necks would take me one second."

Toji kept his voice low.

"But if we just kill them, who clears Suguru Geto's name?"

Satoru Gojo's fingers tightened around the voice recorder.

"If we charge straight into Jujutsu Headquarters and slaughter everyone, the outside world will decide you both lost your minds together. You'll be branded as full-blown Curse Users. Both of you."

Toji pointed at the device in Satoru's hand.

"That thing, a low-level Assistant Supervisor bought it with his whole family's lives. You want it to end up as nothing more than a grave offering?"

"Then tell me how to handle it."

"Killing first — that's what a brute does."

Toji bared his teeth.

"We release this to the entire internet."

"Let the whole Jujutsu World, the Three Great Families, every last low-level Assistant Supervisor hear exactly what kind of rotten garbage they've been serving."

Satoru Gojo's mind moved fast.

What Suguru needed most right now was ironclad proof to clear the village-massacre charges.

The moment that recording went public, the higher-ups became the executioners. The ones who slaughtered civilians.

Suguru became the framed victim.

Then when they went to Kyoto to kill people,

that was called cleaning house. Standing on the right side of history.

"Fine."

The manic glint in Satoru Gojo's eyes faded.

"Give them half a day to keep breathing. Let them die with their names in the dirt."

Half an hour later. Tokyo Jujutsu High.

BANG!

The principal's office door flew open.

Masamichi Yaga stood by the window. The cigarette between his fingers trembled.

Shoko Ieiri sat on the sofa, spinning a scalpel between her fingertips.

"Satoru? You have news?"

Before Masamichi could finish, a black object cracked down onto the desk.

An old-fashioned voice recorder.

"Listen."

Satoru Gojo dragged a chair over and dropped into it, propping his long legs straight onto the coffee table.

"Listen to the disgusting garbage dump that is the Jujutsu Headquarters you've sworn your lives to."

Shoko's hand went still. She looked up at Satoru Gojo.

Masamichi frowned and pressed play.

Crackle...

Harada's desperate, tear-soaked voice. The elder's venomous command. Both of them echoing through the wide office.

"Make it clean. Send them on their way."

"Don't touch Yui! I'll do it!"

The recording cut off.

In the vast office, the only sound was the second hand ticking on the wall.

Masamichi Yaga's hand froze midair, cigarette still raised.

Ash pattered down onto his black uniform.

His straight spine bent.

Jujutsu Sorcerers exist to protect non-sorcerers.

That was Jujutsu High's iron law. The faith he had kept for half a lifetime.

Now, the order to slaughter non-sorcerers had come from the very higher-ups who wrote it.

SNAP!

The scalpel in Shoko's hand sliced the corner clean off the coffee table.

Her head hung low. Her short brown hair fell across her face.

"Those old beasts."

She said it through her teeth.

Satoru Gojo watched without a word.

Suguru had been driven to the very edge. And he still had to carry the filthiest accusations anyone could throw at him.

"Principal."

Toji leaned against the doorframe and crunched through the lollipop in his mouth.

"Stop spacing out. What's the plan for this thing?"

Masamichi drew a long breath, grabbed the landline, and dialed an encrypted number.

"Activate the emergency protocol. Take the audio from this voice recorder and mass-distribute it through the Jujutsu High internal network, directly to every Assistant Supervisor and Jujutsu Sorcerer in the country."

"Bypass the Jujutsu Headquarters firewall."

"Within 5 minutes, I want every living, breathing soul in the Jujutsu World to hear this recording."

He hung up and looked at Satoru Gojo.

"There's going to be resistance. Can you command the Gojo family's higher-ups?"

Satoru Gojo was already on his phone, calling the butler.

"Take the audio Jujutsu High just pushed out and broadcast it using the family's highest-level authority."

"1 hour. I want this recording in every corner of the Jujutsu World."

"Anyone who tries to block it — I don't care how senior they are — they're out of the Gojo family. Immediately."

He tossed the phone down and looked at Masamichi.

"Principal. The evidence is public." A beat. "Can we go kill people now?"

Masamichi looked at the two men in front of him, both of them radiating the same flat, focused intent to kill.

"Satoru. Fushiguro."

His voice softened.

He looked Satoru Gojo in the eyes.

"You go to Kyoto. You kill every last elder. Then what?"

Satoru Gojo frowned. "What do you mean, then what?"

"Jujutsu Headquarters is a machine that's been running for over a thousand years."

Masamichi gave a bitter smile.

"You slaughter the current elders, and the Three Great Families and the conservative faction will nominate a fresh batch to fill the seats before the blood dries."

He shook his head.

"Killing people doesn't solve the root problem. Wipe out this crop, and even rottener ones grow back."

Satoru Gojo went quiet.

A scoff came from beside him.

Toji spat the plastic stick into the trash and brushed off his clothes. He rolled his neck. His joints cracked, loud and sharp.

"Whether it actually fixes anything." He looked at Masamichi. His grin spread wide, untamed. "I have no idea."

"But ripping those old bastards' heads off and kicking them around like soccer balls..."

"At least I'd feel pretty damn good."

Masamichi froze.

He stared at Toji's completely unrepentant thug's face.

He couldn't find a single word to argue back with.

Satoru Gojo stared at Toji for two blank seconds.

His head dropped. His shoulders started shaking.

"HAHAHAHAHA!"

He burst out laughing, loud and genuine.

He threw an arm around Toji's shoulders and slapped him hard on the back.

"Fushiguro-sensei, that theory of yours is an absolute masterpiece."

Satoru Gojo laughed so hard he couldn't stand straight.

"How did I not figure this out sooner — you're exactly my kind of person!"

Suguru was still out there bleeding. The Harada family had nearly been wiped out.

If he couldn't even smash the rage right in front of him to pieces with his own two fists, then what exactly was the point of being the strongest?

Satoru Gojo let go of Toji. The laughter left his face clean.

"Let's go."

He yanked open the collar of his Jujutsu High uniform and walked out.

Toji put his hands in his pockets and followed.

Masamichi Yaga stood in the wrecked office and watched the two of them disappear at the far end of the hallway.

He didn't call after them. Didn't try to stop them.

Today, the sky over Kyoto was going to come down.

......

Kyoto Jujutsu High. Training grounds.

Utahime Iori pulled out her phone with a sigh, already bracing herself for another harassment message from that bastard Satoru Gojo.

Then she saw the sender. The Jujutsu High internal emergency contact channel.

Her expression went flat and serious in an instant.

She tapped the audio file marked [HIGHEST PRIORITY].

Crackle,

A conversation threaded with static spilled out of the speaker, each word landing with perfect clarity in the ears of everyone standing on those grounds.

The entire training ground went silent.

Not quiet. Silent.

Utahime Iori's grip on her phone tightened until her knuckles bleached white, veins rising sharp against the back of her hand.

The higher-ups had ordered the slaughter of civilians.

The higher-ups had framed a Special Grade sorcerer.

Not speculation. Not rumor. Ironclad proof.

Almost at the same moment, the entire Jujutsu World detonated over a single one-minute recording.

Yokohama. Presidential suite. Five-star hotel.

Mei Mei had just stepped out of the shower, wrapped in a bathrobe, toweling her hair. Her phone chimed. She picked it up without much interest and tapped play.

She listened to the recording.

Then the corner of her mouth curved into a slow, interested smile. She slipped a black credit card from somewhere, turned it once between her fingers.

"Well. The negotiating room for mission commissions just got considerably larger."

In places no one could see, the storm had already broken.

Every Assistant Supervisor's internal group chat was flooded within 3 minutes, thousands of messages, rage and fear and profanity piling on top of each other until the servers buckled and went dark.

The Three Great Families' internal emergency channels jammed solid.

The Zenin family and the Kamo family dissolved into chaos.

The Gojo family stayed quiet.

Because they were the ones who'd lit the fuse.

Jujutsu Headquarters, which had sat above everything as the final word on all matters, became a rat the whole world wanted to stomp on.

In the span of minutes.

Tokyo. Shinjuku. An underground bar soaked in neon.

Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer Yuki Tsukumo swirled the whiskey in her glass. Ice clinked. A clean, bright sound.

The perpetual smirk she wore had gone quiet, piece by piece, until it was gone.

"...If we killed every non-sorcerer, wouldn't that create a world without Cursed Spirits?"

Suguru Geto's eyes. The way they'd looked back then, adrift, hollowed out by pain, surfaced in her mind without any warning at all.

"Ha..." Yuki Tsukumo laughed at herself, one short sound. Her red lips pressed into a line.

A wave of guilt hit her, dense and suffocating.

She tilted her head back and emptied the glass in one swallow.

It seemed like she had, with her own hands, walked a good kid straight to the edge and pushed.

➤ Next: Iron-Blooded Reckoning — Jujutsu Headquarters Reduced to a Slaughterhouse